Dreary Dream in an office block

Friday 1 February 2008 00:00 BST

The term "site-specific" can be abused. Take Theatre Delicatessen's unremarkable Dream, which aims for dark and achieves dreary. Set in an office block just by Portland Place, it fails to make this a feature, treating you instead to a standard in-the-round staging. The thought occurs that the choice of venue had more to do with budget and trend-following than artistic considerations.

For this is a real mish-mash of a Dream. Its programme note suggests the intention to unlock bleak contemporary resonances. But Egeus threatening Hermia with death should she marry Lysander does not make this a play about honour crimes any more than 'Allo 'Allo is about Gestapo torture.

So we get a needlessly aggressive tyrant Theseus screaming at Hermia in the opening scene - his change of heart at the end utterly inexplicable. Another dark touch sees Bottom being led away by the fairies screaming in a cage like a tortured animal.

Comedy is very absent. The verse-speaking is mannered, littered with heavy-handed rhythm changes that serve in the stead of genuine emotion. Owen Morse's Bottom has charm but rushes through the lines, afraid to play the language for laughs.

The production is gimmicky: physical theatre bits, someone twinking piano strings in the corner, an apparently endlessly fascinating magical light for the aphrodisiac flower. Director Frances Loy is evidently of the "this looks cool" school. It's all fancy wrapping for a very average product.